Lutheran Core: Birth of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC)
The birth of a splinter Lutheran group last Friday in the US has garnered little in the way of media coverage and the Get Religion blog mulls over the reasons for this.
The new North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was an inevitability following the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) decision last year to allow pastors to be in non-celibate same-sex relationships.
Lutheran Core – a Lutheran coalition for reform - lamented the decision made by the ELCA, and are the group behind the formation of the new NALC. They have released this press release (PDF) in which they rather interestingly claim that the decision to form a breakaway group was not based solely on issues of sexuality:
Lutheran CORE leaders note that the problems in the ELCA are really not about sexual behavior but rather about an ongoing movement away from the authority and teaching of the Bible throughout the ELCA, on issues far broader than simply human sexuality.
“It was not our choice to leave the ELCA, but the ELCA has chosen to reject ‘the faith once delivered to the saints,’ so now we are acting to maintain our position within the consensus of the Church catholic,” said Schwarz.
“The ELCA has decided that it is in a position of authority over the Bible itself rather than submitting to the authority of the Bible over all matters of faith and life,” Chavez said. “And unfortunately, most of the attention is given to the sexuality issues, but there are actually much more disturbing trends within the ELCA.”
On an aside, just before the ELCA took this vote to allow for non-celibate gay pastors, there was an announcement of a new full communion agreement between the ELCA and the United Methodist Church. As part of this agreement was the decision to allow for the sharing of pastors. After the ELCA’s “gay clergy” vote, this threw up the question for the United Methodist Church as to whether they would allow non-celibate gay pastors from the ELCA to minister in their churches.
The answer was a resounding no.
I wonder if the new NALC will seek their own communion agreement with the United Methodist Church?
I imagine there will be a forging of links between the NALC and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as they will most certainly view each other as comrades-in-arms.
Well, you’re pretty much up-to-date.
Tags: Church Life
August 30th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I’m sure their point is correct.
If we were deriving all our teachings from the bible, we wouldn’t even consider ordaining homosexuals. If we ARE so doing, that indicates that we’re really deriving our values from those fashionable in the US in the early 21st century. Which means, of course, we’re really practising a different religion, one whose teaching is derived from contemporary society.
The point is not about the particular keynote evil being enshrined, but about what it says about an organisation that can do it, and what its motivations and purposes have become.
Of course the new religion might be a perfectly valid religion — a different question — but it isn’t the same one any more. And those who want to preserve the old one either engage in the politics of the smoke-filled room, or leave.
August 30th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
And I am equally sure their point is incorrect, in my personal opinion.
They start from the point of view that disagreeing with them on the interpretation of Scripture constitutes a questioning of the Authority of Scripture. That is narcissistic, to say the least.
“If we are deriving all our teachings from the Bible,” the issue of homosexuality would no more come up in discussions of ordination than does the issue of heterosexuality. Living a Christ-centered life in either “–uality” is the central point: loving, caring, monogamous, lifelong relationships and upstanding, exemplary living. What the Bible foments against are bacchanalia, sex acts as part of worship services, and temple prostitution. And the story told of Sodom and Gomorrah is a morality play about a gross violation of hospitality, not sex acts. I don’t say that, Scripture says that.
“If we ARE so doing,” that actually indicates that we’re finally getting yet another iteration of the messages left for us to find in Scripture: God’s love and inclusion is for all, including minorities created by racial, economic, social and sexual orientation factors. God’s message is always in fashion. But we, frail human beings, can be so incredibly slow in getting it. Took us 1,830 years from the death of Christ to finally get it that slavery is wrong before God. Another 104 years to finally enshrine in our laws equality in civil rights for racial minorities, since some of the states in our union, full of those oh-so-loudly-self-proclaiming Christians, were barricading equality behind a wall of poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather rules. Then there’s equality for women, the other 51 percent of God’s children on the planet, discriminated against even here in the United States, oft proclaimed as a “Christian nation” by those wont to wrap God around the flag or vice versa. Took 1,887 years from the death of Christ to get them granted just voting equality. We are really slow at this learning thing.
“If we ARE so doing,” and we ARE, it is because we are still learning, still discerning the truths lying in Scripture as they apply to the world God created. And if we say, foolishly, that there is nothing new to learn, everything we need to know from Scripture is enshrined in the traditional teachings handed down, then there is nothing wrong with the institution of slavery and women really should be subordinate to men, since they are the wellspring of all sin, responsible for the first, most serious, one.
“The point is … about what it says about an organization that can do it, and what its motivations and purposes have become.” I could not agree more: that the ELCA has finally lifted the curtain on the epiphany that LGBT people are and always have been part of the wondrous creation of God is gloriously wonderful and speaks highly of them. Its motivations and purposes remain as were: God’s work, our hands.
I am sure that God goes with those who have departed the ELCA. God promised to always accompany those who go astray – to try to bring the wayward back, even if that waywardness is the simple act of sitting down somewhere in the past while the rest continue the journey of grace led by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit to understand more about God’s wondrous creation and each other.
August 30th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
@ Roger: You write “If we were deriving all our teachings from the bible, we wouldn’t even consider ordaining homosexuals. ”
It would be more accurate to write “ordaining open homosexuals” as closeted homosexuals have always been among those ordained, with the closet doors sometimes very flimsy indeed.
As for what you say about homosexuals, are we to assume you see the abolition of slavery as a recent fashionable quirk too?
What’s a “keynote evil” when it’s at home?
August 30th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
@ Phil Soucy: Three rousing cheers! Your post wasn’t there when I posted mine.
August 30th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Opps, duh, should have prefaced by saying that I am an American, living in the States. Know that may help those who are puzzled by my years-math about legislation. In the U.S.: 1863 Emancipation Proclamation; 1920 Women get the vote; 1967 Civil Rights Law passed.